After half a century of advocating essentially the same CPR routine, the American Heart Association is rolling out new guidelines Monday that fully endorse chest compressions as the go-to method.

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation has a limited or even nonexistent role in the latest recommendations, which were crafted by a panel that includes a San Diego physician. These experts streamlined their message to the public: Whether you’re a seasoned emergency responder or an untrained bystander, immediately start and sustain chest compressions on victims of cardiac arrest.

The updated guidelines are “going to make things simpler, and it’s going to take away the yuck factor,” said Dr. James Dunford, a panel member and the medical director for San Diego city. Studies also have shown that chest compressions alone can significantly raise survival rates.

Events will be held nationwide to promote the refocused approach and encourage more people to learn CPR. Other countries typically follow the United States’ CPR standards, so the American Heart Association and allied groups expect their marketing efforts to eventually resonate across the world.

On Dec. 5, the association will offer free CPR training to the masses aboard the U.S.S. Midway Museum in downtown San Diego in a bid to break the national record for the largest such class. Dunford hopes for a turnout of more than 6,000 participants.

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The current record is 4,600 people trained, set last year by a school district in Virginia. In March, a university in Guadalajara, Mexico, claimed the world record with more than 6,500.

Also this December, San Diego will host the international Emergency Cardiac Care Update conference. The new CPR guidelines will be a primary topic of the gathering, Dunford said.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation can double or triple a person’s chances of survival, yet less than one-third of the people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital receive CPR, according to the heart association. Ninety-two percent of Americans who experience this problem die before reaching an emergency room.

A combination of chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing is still considered ideal, and that strategy is recommended for trained professionals. But instead of starting with mouth-to-mouth, the longtime tradition, experts now call for the compressions first.

Everyone should press down about two inches deep, around the middle of the chest, at a rate of at least 100 compressions per minute — about the same rhythm as the beat of the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive.”

Heart disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. About 830,000 Americans — more than one in three — die from the disease each year; that’s roughly one death every 38 seconds. Sudden cardiac arrest accounts for half of those cases.

In the past few years, the American Heart Association has been moving toward a complete endorsement of compression-only CPR for the untrained public. Research increasingly shows that chest compressions are the crucial first step to reviving victims of sudden cardiac arrest.

Ohio State University emergency physician Michael Sayre, who co-wrote the new guidelines, cited a Seattle study that had one group of 911 dispatchers advising callers to perform traditional CPR and another group directing callers to do only chest compressions. The report, published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine, revealed an 8.7 percent survival rate for people who received chest compressions only and 7 percent for those who received standard CPR.